News Briefs

&lt;/b&gt;The Board of Supervisors on Monday approved a plan that will permit construction of a new Daks Restaurant on Richmond Highway at Woodlawn Court.

Daks has been in other Fairfax County locations including one in Bailey’s Crossroads and a different spot on Richmond Highway, said Jason Heimberg, Daks’ attorney. The other Richmond Highway location closed recently, Heimberg said, and the company has been looking for a new location in the area.

The new site is about two acres and currently has a house and detached garage.

County planners were opposed to the plan. The county’s Comprehensive Plan calls for development along Richmond Highway to be oriented toward the street to present a more urban feel. This development will place the 11,817 square foot building at the rear of the site with parking along the road.

The layout is necessary, said Heimberg, because of the circumstances of the site. "This is one of those rare cases where an exception is warranted," he said.

The rear of the lot is a higher elevation, which will allow the building to be constructed partially underground, which has environmental benefits. Daks also plans to take other eco-friendly steps, such as reducing the amount of ground which will be disturbed and reducing the amount of impervious surface.

Supervisor Gerry Hyland (D-Mount Vernon) supported the plan. He agreed with Heimberg that the Comprehensive Plan really doesn’t fit in this situation, and also said there has been broad community support for the project.

The board approved the plan unanimously.

&lt;b&gt;Oops, Can’t Do That

&lt;/b&gt;The Board of Supervisors approved a rezoning which corrects an error from last July.

The plan calls for developing a roughly six-acre property at the corner of Telegraph and Sharon Chapel roads. The existing historic structure will be preserved and 11 new houses will be built for a total of 12 houses.

When the proposal was first making its way through the development process, the builder, Sharon Chapel, LLC, had requested a density of three houses per acre, even though the actual density would be only two per acre.

Rather than leave unused density on the land, the board voted to allow two houses per acre.

But over the past year, county staff realized that the property contains marine clay. This type of soil is tricky to build on, so the county’s zoning ordinance imposes a density penalty for developments on this sort of land.

Under the two-house per acre density, with the penalty, a maximum of eight houses would be permitted. So, the 12 which were approved violated the county Zoning Ordinance.

As a result, the developer came back through the process to ask the county to (once again) allow three per acre. As a result, after the penalty is imposed, an actual density of two houses per acre, so the same number of houses as had been originally proposed, 12, can be built.